Sweetness Follows
by Cheloya
Summary: When she was younger, Yuffie was afraid of the dark. Yuffentine. Gift fic for Demeter1.


Disclaimer: I do not own Yuffie or Vincent, but this part of Yuffie's history is mine.

A/N: Written for Demeter. She giveth _Pet Shop of Horrors_ manga, and hath not taken away.

I started with the Yuffentine equivalent of pillow talk in mind. Damned if I know what happened, there.

Started: 19th March 2005

Finished: 25th March 2005 (but at 12:27 AM, so I think that counts as the 24th, don't you?)

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**Sweetness Follows**

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**i.**

When she was younger, Yuffie had been afraid of the dark.

She'd never admitted this to anyone, vehemently denied it to all but her father, but she was deathly afraid of the creeping night monsters, and the things that went 'bump' and made shadows just on the other side of the _shoji_. It wasn't since she was little; when she was two or even five, her 'tousan was invincible and _no one_ messed with the Great Ninja Yuffie and got away with it, not even the _gaki_ and the _oni_ that made priestesses and monks sweat fearfully. This fear started later. She was seven.

That night, there was fire past the _shoji_, screaming and shooting and the whistle of poisoned darts and shuriken filling the air along with small missiles newly developed by the Shinra weapons department. She'd heard people screaming before, heard battle, but that night her 'kaasan burst into the room, face streaked with soot and the red dye used to intimidate foes in war. She'd snatched up her daughter's hand and whispered, softly, reassuring despite the blood running down her arms, that they must flee now. Yuffie would have to run with her. She was a good girl, a swift runner, she could do that. She only had to follow 'kaasan, and everything would be all right. 'tousan was going to fix everything. It would be all right.

They had plunged into the frantic darkness, through the flames and the fields with dying men in red uniforms and glinting, ancient armour. Yuffie still remembered the feel of 'kaasan's hair fluttering on her face, her arms, and the horror she felt when she realised the gossamer strands were clotted with blood.

They followed the twists and turns of Leviathan carefully, quickly toward Da Chao when they broke the forest behind the Tower. The gods were on their side; would always be on their side. 'kaasan murmured between gasps for breath as they ran. 'kaasan had Leviathan's scale. Once they made it to the belly of Da Chao, they'd be all right. No one else could pass through the flames of that place, no one save the rightful holder of the scale. They'd be just fine once they reached Da Chao's womb.

They never made the mountain, of course. Yuffie had lost her faith in gods, that night. Her 'tousan couldn't protect her from everything, from _any_thing, and the Great Ninja Yuffie, aged seven, was less than useless against the Great General Sephiroth.

They'd found her two days later, shaking and crying and pale, pressed to the cheek of one of the smaller, sweeter faces of Da Chao and cursing Shinra to skies still dark with battle smoke. Godo had given up hope, given up on his wife and his baby girl, given up the War, but when the negotiations had been made and none of the Shinra could tell him who had killed his daughter, he had come to find her.

It was the first time she had ever seen her 'tousan cry. She hated him for it. He understood.

Two days, she was alone in the darkness of night and the choking black smoke the Shinra made with their abominations of weapons, their killing machines with no honour or pride. She'd slept lightly ever since, woke shivering and weeping as silently as she could. 'kaasan told her to be quiet and she was, she _had_ been, so why did you have to die, hahaue, why did he kill you that way?

Since that night, she had been terrified of the dark.

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ii.**

Over the years, the fear faded.

Well, no. It never faded. She got better and better at pretending that it wasn't there, but it never went away. It got stronger and stronger, and the stronger it got, the stronger she pretended to be, the stronger she tried to be, until she really _was_ the Great Ninja Yuffie, and there really were very few people who could have stopped her when she put her mind to something.

Her 'tousan sent her on quest after endless quest, for money, for materia, for anything that would help the once-proud Wutai regain its former status, for anything that would keep Yuffie occupied and out of his hair.

She knew he'd never throw off Shinra's chains. Kisaragi Godo had lost his inner strength to the shadows that same night that Yuffie had learned to fear the darkness. But she did everything he asked of her, proving time and again that she was worthy of respect and power and she was not afraid.

Occasionally, when the sun was high and bright and the fields were filled with dandelion fluff, she almost managed to convince herself.

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iii.**

The trouble with Nibelheim, she decided years later, was that all it really _had_ was shadows. Shadows of people, shadows of memory, all encompassed and presided over by the looming shadow of Mount Nibel itself. The town unsettled her to begin with - and that was _before_ AVALANCHE ventured into the Shinra Mansion. After that, it scared the crap out of her.

So naturally she proclaimed to them all that she loved it. Pushed them into the deepest, darkest corners and, with her sharp eyes and keen sense of adventure, she found four clues that changed her life forever.

_1. On the chest with the most oxygen.  
__2. Behind the ivory's short of tea and ray.  
__3. The creak in the floor near the chair on the second floor. Then to the left five steps, up nine steps, left two steps and up six steps._

And below, in invisible ink,

_4. Right – 97_

She understood them immediately, of course. Wutai had always been cryptic and arcane and she'd adapted to that before she could walk, much less speak. She and Aeris had dragged Cloud through the mansion on the hunt for clues. Yuffie had all but danced as she entered the safe's combination and heard the loud, echoing click that meant she'd been right and the safe was now unlocked and its contents ripe for the taking.

Aeris' determination to rescue whomever was locked in the basement had not faded with the appearance and subsequent smiting of the monster within the safe. Yuffie's blood was up; she spoke loudly and hopefully of what reward the slumbering prisoner in the basement might grant them once they saved his skin.

She became louder and more daring as they descended, even as Cloud clammed up and shifted nervously whenever they paused. Yuffie knew Aeris knew she was scared half out of her mind, knew the pretty Cetra was too kind to say anything, and knew that Aeris was the only one unafraid in the darkness and decay of the mansion. Aeris knew, when it came down to it, that she could rely on her companions.

Yuffie hadn't had that sort of confidence in a long time.

So she danced down the corridor, punching at air and threatening imaginary fiends with quick swipes of her shuriken. She assaulted the rotting, dusty door set in the stone of the passageway thoroughly before she let Cloud put the key in it, wondering whether a monster would be drawn to or repelled by the noise she was making.

They entered, to silence, and Yuffie gagged on the musty air. A tomb within the Shinra Mansion. _This is perfect,_ she laughed aloud, _they really _do_ have skeletons in their closet!_ She'd pushed at the lid of the nearest one with all her strength and for all its loud grating, when she was done with it, it was only very slightly ajar. She was about to turn to call Cloud over when she caught a sliver of movement from within. A yelp escaped her before she could stifle it; they fell back into defensive positions as the entire stone slab atop the sarcophagus was shunted aside like so much papier-mache.

Paleness and shadow and scarlet loomed.

She laughed in the face of danger.

Danger, she noticed when he joined them a short while later, never laughed back.

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iv.**

He never laughed, and battle gave her the reason. That first battle, sensing something building beneath his skin - something horrible, terrifying, intriguing despite her fears.

She watched him when she thought she could get away with it, helplessly entranced. He was beautiful. Monstrous. There was something inside him that clawed its way relentlessly through his cold and calculated indifference, something that threatened at every moment to spill out through his mouth, his nose, to take controland she didn't know what it was.

The sixth battle gave her more answers than she had ever wanted to see.

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****v.**

Later, when they'd met her father, when they knew her true motivations, when Aeris was dead and gone, Vincent was her constant companion. Her made the group uneasy with his lengthy silences, with his ancient and alien method of speech, with his eyes, red raw and piercing. She made them fear for their wallets, their gear bads. It was a match made in Hell; some terrible parody of _shogi_ pieces or a Tarot: The Monster and The Thief.

What would she mean if someone picked and laid her out, straight or inverted, on a tabletop? How would she move? She didn't know.

She found that she knew him without trying, though. She knew what he would mean, and spent some time after she'd first created the analogy imagining the fortune-telling stall in her head: Cait Sith, draped in shimmering, colourful gauzes and tacky gold bangles and coins, muttering in high-pitched and squawking tones, _you will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger._

That Cait Sith would fail to mention, she thought later, that this tall, dark and handsome was really tall, pale and angsty, spent his free moments staring into space after the ghost of a woman who'd birthed an artificial (and all the more terrifying) devil in human flesh, spinning his pistols endlessly over his human fingers, afraid to lose the little dexterity he had left.

His _shogi_ piece would move patiently, one square at a time, until it reached a tight spot on the board and suddenly exploded to envelop not only the playing field, but all the pieces upon it.

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vi.**

She was with him when he saw _her_ that one last time; with him when the terrible, crippling hope flooded his eyes; with him when _she_ left again and the hope fled with her, leaving him a cold and broken statue kneeling, choking, in the cave behind the waterfall.

She was with him when he took the vial of ominously innocent, milk-white liquid; with him when the bitterness spread across his features and whispered what she already knew:

_I'm getting less human._

She was with him after the bloodlight in his eyes flared; with him, even though he'd screamed at her to run; with him when the final monster burst from his pale, perfect flesh to howl, wrathful, at the smooth, worn walls of the cave and the girl who stood so boldly before it (though her breath froze in her lungs and her legs were locked in place).

The demon had crouched; sprungand changed shape, mid-air, Vincent sprawling gracelessly at her feet. With his face curtained as it was by a fall of black hair, she couldn't tell if his ragged breathing hid a sob or not.

She was with him, hours later, as they trekked patiently onward and the shadows lengthened on the plains. Yuffie realised, as the sun went down, that the darkness no longer frightened her. She had seen the world's most terrifying monsters.

They were all held fast and tightly restrained in the mind of the man who guarded her back, and he would never release them, not for worlds, not for oceans, not for peace.

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vii.**

It was funny, she knew in a distant part of her mind, having defeated Sephiroth and smote Shinra, having avenged her 'kaasan, and Aeris, and a thousand other Wutaians besides, that in the midst of their finest hour, in the midst of their daring and dangerous escape from the Crater, she was once again on her hands and knees in a corner of the cargo hold, puking wretchedly into a bucket.

It really was god damned _funny_.

She was far from pumped, now, with the adrenaline seeping from her system 'til she was weak and shaking, unable to even clench her abdominal muscles for a proper heave. Instead, she gasped and gulped and flopped miserably on the icy metal, sweating and crying nausea tears. The deck vibrated beneath her with the power of the engines and the abuse that the Highwind was facing from outside forces, Meteor and the recent swelling of the Lifestream being cases in point.

Over these massive shakings, somehow, she noticed small, trembling, pinging sounds as Vincent approached in his good, old-fashioned, steel-enforced boots. He stared down at her, face a blank mask, eyes invisible past the curtain of ebony and the shadow of his brow, and Yuffie (denouncing herself as delirious) felt a laugh shake her: _The world is ending, monster man. Don't you want to do anything?_

He crouched beside her and gripped the edge of her precious bucket with his claw. She held fast; she was _not_ going to vomit all over her shoes.

"W-what are you doing? What's happening?"

Her voice was weaker than she wanted it to be, but she didn't care any more. If they were in more trouble than she thought they were (she scoffed even as she thought it; that would have been pretty goddamn hard), she wanted to know about it.

Vincent tugged patiently at her bucket with the claw, slipping his human hand beneath the strap of her arm guard and pulling her slowly, inexorably, to her feet. She relinquished her bucket, feeling her stomach lurch, and glared at him - if he wanted to get barfed all over, that was _just_ fine with her. It wasn't like she'd be the one walking into _Yomi_ with her clothes all covered in remnants of a technicolour yawn.

"Experience is by far preferable to second-hand accounts. Can you walk?"

She nearly laughed at him, but the surge of bile in her throat stopped her, made her swallow.

"Are you k-kidding? I can barely" Slapped her free hand over her mouth abruptly, and leaned towards his claw, aiming for the bucket that it held.

Well, she tried. And it really _was_ his fault.

Vincent looked as though he was trying to find a way to put the bucket, and Yuffie, down gently and remove the expelled liquid from his claw-tips without betraying his stoic exterior.

She wiped her mouth and then her eyes, wearily, hugging the bucket to her chest.

"You're an-n _idiot_, you know that? A big, insensitive jerk. Here I am, sick as a dog, and you want me to come look at my impending doom. Thanks, Vinnie. That's realngk. Real thoughtful of you."

Vincent pursed his lips and looked away. "...I did not wish to watch it, either."

The Highwind shuddered more violently for a moment, dropping several feet before regaining its previous altitude. Yuffie felt her heart stop, then start again as though desperate to make up for lost time. Her stomach seemed pretty eager, too. She kept talking, trying to distract it.

"And here I thought you spent all your time waiting for death to come and smack you in the face, Vinnie." She gave him a wavering smile. "I do want to see it, sorta. I just don't want to throw up all over the control panel and make us nosedive just when we think we're out of hot water."

Vincent nodded, eyes vacant. Then he said, "There is always the boarding deck."

Yuffie thought about it, while her stomach churned, and finally nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, let's go down to the boarding deck."

They were halfway across the floor to the staircase when Cid's voice rang out, stunned and gleeful, across the intercom.

_"Vince, Yuffie, get your asses up here! It's over! It's over and it's all okay!"_

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It was perfectly still as they emerged onto the observation deck. The air was still warm from the scorching winds of Meteor, but it was a soothing sort of warmth, now, the kind found in a mother's arms. Yuffie stared at the darkness of the landscape, at the blaring, gaping _absence_ of Meteor and said, eloquently, "What the fuck?"

Vincent was quick to fill her in, his voice oddly charged. "The Lifestream arose to join forces with Holy. That was when I came to get you. It appears... it appears that the Lifestream was successful."

Yuffie gaped at the landscape, the untouched landscape racing by beneath them in the wan light of a sickle moon, and felt a grin spreading over her face.

"Vinnie, are you saying we won? Aeris' prayer, it made it to the Planet? She saved us?" Her voice was rising in pitch, and she was gripping his arm so tightly she was sure hat anyone else would have been in pain. Vincent merely glanced down at her, eyes strangely warm, and nodded primly.

Yuffie was still grinning. And, seeing that strange warmth in his eyes, and the hint of a smile about his mouth, the hint of a flush of genuine pleasure on the pallor of his cheeks, she felt a little shriek of pure, unadulterated happiness rising in her throat.

She jumped, impulsively, and he caught her, surprised, and she flung her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips, and she kissed him so hard and so thoroughly that for a few moments afterwards neither of them could breathe.

She was still shining with mirth when she realised what she had done; she was certain he'd be mortified. Vinnie was such a stiff, sometimes.

She was rather surprised when he sat her carefully on the railing, claw arm still supporting the small of her back, and stuck his tongue out with an expression of distaste to wipe it vigorously with his human hand. She stared at this for a few seconds, shocked, and thumped both her fists into his shoulders, outraged.

"Vincent Valentine, right now there are ten thousand men across the face of the Planet who would kill for the chance to kiss my _feet!_" She said, not quite sure whether she should kill him or kill herself.

He retracted his tongue, but remained looking vaguely disgusted.

"I apologise, but... you taste like _bile_."

Yuffie punched him again, but she was starting to laugh despite herself. "Well, what the hell else did you think I'd _taste_ like, you bigahaha_hahaha_, you big _turkey_!"

She was crying and she was laughing, and before she knew it, she was grabbing him by his stupid, wonderful, double-breasted suit and yanking him closer and kissing him again.

This time, bile-flavoured or no, Vincent had no objections.

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A/N: Like I said, don't quite know what happened to the pillow talk. :scratches head: Either way, hope you enjoyed it, Demeter!

'kaasan - mother

'tousan - father

hahaue - respectful, shortened version of 'mother'

gaki - hungry ghost

oni - ogre/demon

shoji - paper used in the making of Japanese screen doors

shogi - a Japanese game often likened to chess

Yomi - the Japanese world of the dead; the 'lowest' part of a three-tier world view, much like Hell.


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